Ursula Duba was born in Cologne, Germany, at the start of World War II. As a young girl, she experienced Allied bombings and food shortages. At age 19, she convinced her strict father to allow her to travel outside Germany for the first time to visit relatives. During this visit, she went on a blind date with a young Jewish man. It was from him that she learned about the Holocaust. She began doing research on the war and writing poetry about being "a child of the enemy."